Interesting… a more obvious attempt to cover one’s *ss would be hard to conceive.

Since my personal biggest frustration with CS is the communication, I guess that would be as good a place to start as any. A good question format for this purpose may be to give statements and ask people to rate whether or not they agree with them; anyone is welcome to contribute statements (would be nice if you could keep them somewhat serious, lol), or give me other feedback regarding this idea.

• Take responsability (either assertively or, using the other CS-keyword, aggressively)
• Make promises. The less tangible or the more gratuitous, the better
• Silence the criticism when you don’t live up to your promise (by adapting the ground rules; by moving the criticism; by deleting threads?)
• When the above doesn’t help: ignore the criticism
• When the above doesn’t help: spin
• If all else fails: ‘loose interest’ (i.e., abandon ship)

Many of you will find this a minor issue, and you’d be right. But today, Donna announced her intention to drop moderatorship of the CS Politics and Policy group. It is typical of the above style: if your blatant lack of skill / involvement to make a much-wanted change gets too obvious, simply drop your responsability and you’re done!

For some time now I’ve been having the impression that many ‘leaders’ and their groupies have distanced themselves more and more from the regular usership. This instance was particularly clear, but I’m sure there have been others as well. All these little kings and queens, much too busy with their self-created importance to bother about the actual cause they claim to work so hard for… it would be funny if it weren’t so sad.

Sorry for ranting, I don’t usually do that. In any case, I do hope that none of ‘us’ will be foolish enough to lift this problem off Donna’s shoulders. Would do her good to actually address a (self-inflicted) problem for a change (gosh, did that sound bitter? )

I log into CS several times a day, or at least I try to do so to keep up to speed with my surf requests, but lately the system seems to be failing even more than usual. Was wondering; is disclosing uptime and downtime something the CS ‘management’ has to decide on, or is there another service/website/individual/organisation keeping track of that?

Scan of CS corporate records; articles of incorporation; amended bylaws; conflict of interest policy; additional documents

Disclaimer: as far as I was able to determine, publishing copies of these documents does not require consent of the New Hampshire Secretary of State. This post will be removed immediately upon first request, should publication on this website not be in full accordance with legislation.

This is really sad, yet another low. Please, all who are committed to hospitality exchange, go elsewhere where people are in charge who grasp the concept of community

1. The company that owns CouchSurfing.com, CouchSurfing International inc., is privately owned and has Casey Fenton as is its sole owner and director. He holds all power over the company and, consequently, the website. This means that, when push comes to shove,
   1. He cannot be held accountable for how donations are spent
   2. He can sell CouchSurfing.com to whomever and walk away with the dough whenever he gets tired of it
   3. CS users have no of influence whatsoever on anything CS-related
2. Although incorporated as a not-for-profit, CouchSurfing International inc. is not a charitable organisation. Not-for-profit status only means that the company cannot pay dividend to its owners (i.e. Casey); the company and its assets still are his, and his alone. Casey can do with it whatever he wants, whenever he wants it
   1. In addition, not-for-profit status does give not any kind of guarantee that company assets are not utilised for personal enrichment. For instance, as its sole owner/director, Casey can give out loans to himself or others at zero-interest rates, and use that money privately to make a profit
   2. Such potential abuse of company assets is even easier because CouchSurfing International inc. does not appear genuinely interested in obtaining a “501c3″ tax exemption. Non-profit organisations can easily apply for this designation with the IRS, but it requires compliance with strict disclosure and reporting duties, plus having a board of directors, and Casey doesn’t like that much openness. Therefore, part of user donations is waisted on avoidable tax-paying
   3. Most importantly, CouchSurfing International inc. does not have a clause in its bylaws that irrevocably dedicates company assets to a charitable cause. This means that Casey can always revoke the company’s not-for-profit designation and cash in, by volition but also by necessity (for instance, when he or the company ever get sued for damages)
3. In clause 5.1 of the Terms of Use, CouchSurfing International inc. claims a virtually unbounded and irrevocable right to use whatever material you decide to upload to its servers for its own purposes, without limiting these in any way. This opens up the road to selling user data, including your contact and site usage details, to third parties. At the same time, CouchSurfing International inc. does not have a published policy detailing how they keep your personal information safe
4. There are no published protocols how the company deals with users committing crimes (violence, abuse, theft…) that involve other users; instead, these appear to be dealt with in an ad hoc fashion. In addition, it is extremely difficult to find who’s responsible for what when it comes to safety. By being so negligent, CouchSurfing International inc. puts the users of CS at risk
5. On the whole, CouchSurfing.com scores very poorly on transparency. There are hardly any protocols about anything; there is no full list of people on the payroll of CouchSurfing International inc., information is scattered across countless forums and scores of mailgroups, etc. The current management seems to take no interest whatsoever in even starting to improve this situation
6. Apart from being fraudfully sollicited (i.e., under the pretext that CS is a charity / non-profit), aspiring volunteers are asked to sign a non-disclosure agreement in which they cede all rights on the material they develop to CouchSurfing International inc.
7. All known employees of CouchSurfing International inc. (i.e., Casey Fenton, Matthew Brauer, Jim Stone and Weston Hankins, all of whom are members of the Leadership Team) are male caucasian US citizens.
8. The verification procedure is a blatant scheme for increasing donations. It does not offer any kind of added security, and could be carried out at a fraction of the current fee
9. What little financial information is available gives cause for suspicion. There are interesting discrepancies between assets and interest gained, and attempts to get this clarified are met with deafening silence
10. Casey and the other employees of CouchSurfing International inc., as well as the influential volunteers in CouchSurfing.com simply do not respond to any kind of question or criticism at all, while still hammering on CS being a community-thing

How I just love retired accountants! It seems that Pickwick is on to another scandal…

According to the (minimal, and legally insufficient) financial reports over the 3rd quarter 2007, CouchSurfing International inc. is well in the dough, and has a neat $101,900.69 in the bank… but wait a second, over that sum, why has the company made only $281.26 interest??!!

I know banks in the US are in a difficult position these days, but an interest rate of less than 0,27% seems pretty strange… Or could it be that someone is turning a private profit on these funds? Nah, that would be ridiculous, CS being a ‘non-profit’ and all…

1. What that you ever did for CouchSurfing.com entitles you to take this kind of action?
2. What is your interest in harming CouchSurfing.com?

To me these reactions indicate that the community at large does not recognise a crucial difference between civil litigation and criminal prosecution. The former is a legal procedure between two parties, each with their private interests; the latter is between ‘the people’ and whoever harms the public interest.

That’s right, the public interest, and CS users would do good to realise that they are the public here. Just some points for consideration:

• If you decide to donate a (substantial) amount of money to CouchSurfing because you think it is a charity, only to find out it isn’t because the IRS fines you for illicit tax deductions, your interest is being harmed.
• If you decide to donate valuable time as a volunteer to CouchSurfing because you think it is a charity, only to find out you’ve made a fool of yourself because you put free slaving on your resume, your interest is being harmed.
• If Casey decides to sell your user data to a third party for a neat sum, and this party turns out to be a spammer, your interest is being harmed.
• If you decide to donate code and programming effort to CouchSurfing because you’re an idealist and you believe in its cause, only to find out that Casey sells CouchSurfing International inc. to a large commercial player that turns CS into a paid service, your interest is being harmed.

To return to the responses I started with, it will be clear that the potential harm to the public interest is all the moral entitlement Pickwick needs for his actions. Second, they aren’t even his actions to begin with, let alone they could serve a private interest; if the New Hampshire DA sees sufficient reason to prosecute, they are the public’s actions.

Norbert has placed the following post in the brainstorm forum on CS. I felt it should be cross-posted here, so that it can be given due public support by those who feel that’s appropriate. It sure has mine!

“This is my final appeal to Casey and the Leadership Team. I haven’t filed my report yet with the Attorney General of New Hampshire. I would prefer not to do it. I don’t like the role. And I don’t like the fact that this may divert resources into legal procedures, costs, and possible fines. Don’t get me wrong, though: I’m not making any excuses for myself. I will do it if I have to, whether I like it or not. It will not be my fault for reporting it, but the fault of those who broke the law. Yet I feel there is still time to ‘heal’ the situation. CouchSurfing has been represented as a charity without being one, and has thus violated the law. It has failed to comply with registration, reporting and disclosure duties. It has obtained donations of money, time and skills under false pretenses. It has broken the law. It has done the wrong thing. The best defence against those charges obviously is to make it a real charity immediately. That would not undo the legal violations, but it would make them ‘technical’ rather than substantial, and I suppose they could then be overlooked.

This would have to be done with credibility. Mere words will no longer be enough, especially when they are cold, and don’t show an intention to reach out. It would be good to hear an admission of mistakes here and there, or at least an acknowledgment that help from members could be useful. I would like to see the true message of strength from the Leadership Team that comes with admitting they’re not perfect. How could they be? They are mostly young, motivated people, at the beginning of their professional lives, working for us in exchange for a bag of peanuts! So be who you are; don’t claim to be Bill Gates! If you say: this is what I’m good at, and here’s where I need assistance, people will come and help you. If you claim to be perfect, and are arrogant with it, people will try to prove you’re not so perfect after all. If we disagree, by all means do it your way, and not mine, as you’re the ones doing the work, but don’t lie and don’t bully.

I believe a genuine charity is the best way forward, as it will allow motivating future volunteers. This organisation has to spend a lot of time and effort on finding out what it wants from volunteers, and more importantly: what it wants to offer them. It needs to learn urgently that volunteering is a give and take situation, and not a one way street. That doesn’t negate that many volunteers are perfectly happy. They have found rewards for their work, mostly in their own local communities. But that is their own achievement, just like the volunteering itself. The organisation does not seem to be offering much. Where’s the volunteer training? Where are the written testimonials given for thousands of hours of dedicated services, that people might use for job applications in their CV, proving they exercised and acquired skills? Instead cold emails are sent out that “your services will no longer be retained due to personal differences”. Wrong way. Volunteers need to be at the very heart of the organisation. Please treat them as ‘human resources’, not as free labour without minds. I fear there is no ‘healing’ of the wounds suffered by some ex-volunteers, as some of them seem too deep. The effort here will need to be: not to let it happen again.

CouchSurfing, and a number of individuals, may face serious legal consequences, and real pressure can be put on you to honour your word and become a charity. That will happen unless you make it obsolete by doing the right thing now. You can’t, however, be forced legally to put the word ‘irrevocable’ in your bye-laws asset dedication, but you may realise it’s the ‘open sesame’ that leads forward and restores trust. In any event, the obligations that come with genuine charity status (irrevocable or not) to adopt acceptable (team) corporate governance instead of a one-man-band, to have annual reporting and disclosure duties, in other words: public supervision, will be a huge improvement. It will be both: control and support mechanism, to ensure you’ll do the right thing. Please do it.”

As Norbert points out here, the LT’s apparent unwillingness to make haste with the 501c3 application for tax exempt status, as well as their unwillingness to publish corporate bylaws or make drafts of these available for discussion, may well be construed as an (attempt at) fraud, because donations and services are and have been obtained under the (currently false) pretense that CS is a charity.

Needless to say, this renders CS extremely vulnerable to all sorts of liability suits, interestingly of the kind that is likely not to be covered by the ToA. Basically, any user who has donated volunteer work or money (besides the verification fee) to CS can claim that he has been the victim of this fraud; add to this the easy access to legal representation in the US (due to no cure, no pay) and Norbert’s prediction that liability is likely to extend to all natural persons working in, and owning CS, and you can easily grasp the size of the time bomb Casey’s currently sitting on.

And how do you reckon that Casey, Jim and Mattthew were to produce the funds needed for compensation if this happens? Precisely, from the sale of CS to a commercial third party, which is entirely within Casey’s right…